Beyond the Office: Why the Future of Work Leaves Jamie Dimon Behind

Recently, Jamie Dimon reiterated his stance on the return to office, emphasizing in December 2024 and January 2025 that in-person work remains essential to productivity, collaboration, and career development. His perspective, reflective of the traditional corporate model, continues to generate debate about the evolving nature of work. Given these renewed discussions, we felt it timely to revisit this interview from April 2023, in which we explored why the future of work must move beyond rigid office mandates and instead embrace a multidimensional workforce strategy.

April 2023: 

Interviewer: You’ve been a staunch supporter of the future of work. What do you think of Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan and David Solomon at Goldman Sachs recently declaring that everyone will be back in the office full time this summer and that work won’t really change much from where it was before?

SB: I understand why Jamie Dimon takes this position—not because it’s best for his employees, but because JP Morgan has underwritten half of Manhattan. Of course, he wants people in offices.  So, we shouldn’t be looking to Jamie Dimon to determine who should be in an office.  And, respectfully, I think it’s a sign that companies, like JP Morgan, that used to set the trends, drive workplace standards, and hold the mantle of “the greatest companies” are now out of touch. If this is his stance and he truly believes it benefits JP Morgan employees, then in five years, we’ll be looking to entirely different standard bearers and metrics for workplace guidance.

Before the pandemic, people were largely expected to have only two dimensions: your employer (which defined what you “do”) and your family. And even then, “family” often only counted as another dimension if you had children. That’s it—two dimensions. Yes, we talked about “taking care of yourself” and “work-life balance,” but only if it didn’t disrupt these two accepted areas. If you spoke about other passions, they were seen as distractions from what made a “good employee.”

This unspoken rule inevitably left people out. We left out men and women without children, implying that other family and life goals weren’t enough to adjust a work schedule for. We left out entrepreneurs who pursued their ideas on the side. We left out people whose pets were their lives or who dreamed of running a triathlon or climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. We left out mothers who wanted to watch their kids’ baseball games. We left out Black and brown employees who often had multigenerational responsibilities that didn’t fit this traditional model.

Think back to 2019—requesting a flexible work schedule to pick up your child from school was acceptable, but still an “accommodation” that could sideline you from job opportunities or signal alternate priorities. But requesting flexibility to pick up your younger sibling or take your grandmother grocery shopping? That wasn’t even considered.

This outdated thinking, in my opinion, is a relic of the Industrial Revolution, when an employee’s value was measured by reliably showing up on the factory floor five days a week to play their part. Twist your widgets, then return home for the weekend to spend time on the one other allowable dimension—your family. But in the process, we created gaps—gender, geography, race, and entrepreneurship—that forced people to choose between their multidimensional lives and advancing within an antiquated system. We allowed more people into the workforce without changing how we worked because this was the way that the leaders, thinking like Jamie Dimon, who were in charge advanced through the ranks. This was what they were comfortable with because this is what they experienced in their careers. It’s all they knew.

When companies finally had to confront their lack of diversity at the top, they reacted with easy, surface-level fixes:

• Training: That’s easy to set up.

• Mentorship: Women in the organization, explain to other women how you navigated the narrow two-dimensional framework of family and employer.

• Diversity Hiring: Let’s hire diverse candidates—ignoring the structural issues that prevent people of color, women, and others with multidimensional lives from thriving in this system. We focused on retaining those inside the organization but neglected those who had already left.

These efforts didn’t work because the expectations hadn’t changed.  And while DE&I initiatives in some was brought to light practices that needed fixing, for the most part, they’ve failed. And only now, after a few years, are people and companies acknowledging that they just don’t work.

Then, in March 2020, the pandemic shattered institutional norms so abruptly—amid childcare crises, school closures, and widespread loss—that we barely recognized the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity it created. Suddenly, corporate America could access talent previously sidelined by gender, race, entrepreneurship, and geography.

Suddenly, we created a pathway for employees to be multidimensional. People moved closer to family, gaining financial freedom without city rents. We relied less on nannies and babysitters and stayed home. Most importantly, we allowed employees to talk about more aspects of their lives, starting with themselves. It wasn’t just about my employer and my family; it was about me, my mental health, my pets, my extended family, my neighbors, my community, my dreams, desires, and wishes. Those limited communities we once had—work and family—somehow expanded, even when we couldn’t physically see anyone.

So, when we talk about the future, I strongly disagree with Jamie Dimon’s view of what young people want today. As leaders, we have to be purposeful with our words because words matter. We’ve changed our entire lives, and we don’t just “go back to the way things were” when the CDC said the pandemic is over. Because, frankly, the way things were didn’t work for everyone, unless of course you looked like Jamie Dimon.

I believe there will always be CEOs who want to oversee their “factory floor” and watch employees click away. But in the war for talent, a company’s edge comes from finding innovative, creative people. And innovation comes from these multiple dimensions that employees are now open to sharing without fear of being accused of distractions. We now have access to a wonderfully diverse workforce in places we never previously considered, like Shreveport, Louisiana, and Omaha, Nebraska. We can reach the skilled, experienced workforce that left us—women in suburbs who couldn’t commute and manage family. Or people of color in communities where they had responsibilities beyond the traditional work model. And entrepreneurs, who used to feel they had to choose between financial hardship to pursue their ideas or selling short to work for someone else, can now integrate with corporate America, driving innovation into the mainstream.TheF

When we welcome these dimensions into our workforce and let people bring their whole selves to work, everyone wins. Companies that embrace this shift will lead the conversation in five years, having won the war for talent—while Jamie Dimon will be the one asking how they did it..

While I approach this from the perspective of a woman, because that’s what I relate to and understood when I launched FEAT, the real opportunity here lies with millennials and Gen Z. They understand this—they don’t see their self-worth as tied to an employer. They’re not aspiring to gold watches. But they do crave professional development, and they want their hard work to mean something. They’ll bring an efficient 40% to the table, more meaningful than the 90% employees gave a century ago. Because, after all this technology and innovation, if it still takes 40 hours to accomplish what it did in 1920, what have we gained?

While the community next-gen employees feel at work is valuable, it’s no longer their only community. Drinks with colleagues are important, but so is a drink with a neighbor. Corporate training is essential, but so is that art class they’re taking.

So, to bring it back to your question: Do I believe the future of work is returning to the office five days a week? Do I agree with Jamie Dimon’s claim that “the workplace won’t change very much”? No, I don’t. In a world of change, there are those who make it happen, those who let it happen, and those who wake up wondering what happened. I think we know where Jamie Dimon might find himself.